Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/704

686 are accustomed to do work with zeal and conscientiously. This trait can not, however, be developed physiognomically as the result of intellectual efforts and the expression of tenacity, except the corresponding states of the mind are repeated not only often but with duration. We recognize in them the tenacem propositi virum (man tenacious of his purpose) of Horace, the persevering man; and also, when the expression of the pinched air is engraved with a particular force, the opinionated, obstinate, headstrong, hardened man.

The expression of contempt, or disdain, is manifested partly in the eyes and partly in the mouth. A person who wishes to show his contempt raises his head in order to cast his look downward upon the object of his scorn; he thus expresses that he feels superior to the one who appears low to him—only he does not look straightforwardly at the object, but side wise, as if he did not judge it necessary to turn his head in order to fix his eyes upon him; at the same time the eyelids droop as in sleepiness and as a sign of extreme indifference toward the real or imaginary cause. Still, a certain degree of idle and constrained attention is recognizable in the stretched appearance of the frontal muscles; the eyebrows are drawn up and horizontal wrinkles are formed on the skin of the forehead (Fig. 14). Thus, a feeble degree of contempt is expressed only in the eyes, but in the rising degrees of a haughty disdain the expression of the mouth becomes modified in a peculiar way. The bitter trait appears in the upper lip, as if the person were feeling a disagreeable, nauseating taste, and simultaneously the lower lip is pushed forward and upward, as if in the desire to remove an insignificant object from the neighborhood of the lips. The sign that the object is regarded as very insignificant is derived from the fact that in elongating the lower lip we are accustomed to blow a little puff of air, as if that were enough to blow away so light an object. Hence the mimic expression of contempt is a complicated one, and is related partly to imaginary objects and partly to imaginary sensorial impressions.

As in the pinched trait, the lower lip is likewise drawn up in the trait of contempt, and in both cases by means of the two levator muscles of the chin. The expression of stubbornness, however, is essentially distinguished from that of contempt by the lips being drawn inward, while in contempt the lower lip is pushed forward. This is due to a combined action of the levator muscles and of the triangular muscles of the chin; while the